Countdown to Oblivion (Hyperfuture series)
I’ve been using hypnosis to put myself to sleep, and I’ve been wondering why hypnotherapists always use a pocket watch to put you in a state of hypnosis. My dad said it must be because it gives them something to focus on, like a pendulum, which I guess makes sense. Most people carried a pocket watch with them since they didn’t have wristwatches and phones back then. Maybe it served a double purpose with the ticking as white noise to drown out distractions. But personally, I like the less obvious answer that came to me one day:
Frank McConnell once said, “To be conscious at all is to be conscious of time”. I think he might be making a point, albeit not the point he intended, not the point he was evidently referring to: we don’t have five senses but 12. Imagine if you had to live your life without even one of them. I’ve already lost one: chronoception or time perception, and I don’t know when I’ll ever earn it back — if I’ll earn it back. Does that mean I’m unconscious? Because I know for one that I don’t have to pinch myself to tell you that I’m very much awake. I am much more awake in this hyperfuture than I have ever been on earth time.
I wonder for a moment if it were possible to manipulate time the way hypnotherapists manipulate consciousness. Maybe that way time travel would be possible. Some actually believe there’s no reason it shouldn’t be possible, theoretically. Move faster than the speed of light and you travel back in time.
In any case, until someone actually does prove it to be physically possible, we only get to experience one reality at a time–one where time is linear. One reality at a time is enough to worry about.
Now I lay me down to sleep. I let the hypnotherapist count me down to oblivion. I pray hypnosis does its trick.
About the series:
Hyperfuture is a philosophical dive into what physics tells us about time. Hyperfuture is defined as “a space-time block, distinct from ours, situated in an additional temporal dimension: hypertime”. Taking from the quote, “to be conscious at all is to be conscious of time”, it explores the theme of clairvoyance, free will, chronoception, and time dilation in relation to how we create meaning of our ephemeral existence on earth. The series features works in realism, referencing actual scenes from life, and surrealism and suggestivism to depict the subconscious to explore whether time — a construct — works independently of consciousness. One symbol will be highlighted: the hypercube or tesseract which shows the fourth dimension which is time.
